by Scott Baron
Chapter Forty
Freya’s mechs had been working for months, the non-stop tinkering continuing throughout all of her many adventures. But now she had made a decision. Whether or not she was entirely ready, she couldn’t put it off any longer. The time had come.
Like an artist constantly tweaking a masterpiece, she would finally have to take a step back and admit she had done all she could.
It was time to reveal her masterpiece.
The mechs retreated from the fabricator apparatus, the jet-black cube ensconced within the most powerful array of processors ever created, nestled safely in place after its fat-pipe data transfer cables had been capped and its endless connections and relays had been meticulously placed.
The massively-reinforced system had then been tightly embedded within the heavily armored frame of a small, highly maneuverable stealth ship. It was far too small for passengers, designed for speed and maneuverability alone. Unfortunately, that particular project was not yet complete, but Freya knew she simply couldn’t finish it soon enough. It would have to wait.
As for weapons, those could be added to the little craft later, if needed. That is, should the vessel ever even need to be deployed from its safe home within her walls. Freya hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Not after so much hard work. For now, at least, it would rest within her.
The pinnacle of her skills sat ready for activation. All that she needed to do was key in the correct commands.
“Well,” she said, “we need this, ready or not. I just hope it works.” She paused with nervous energy. “All right, here goes nothing.”
A power surge dimmed her lights momentarily as the massively powerful device cycled through its initiation sequence. The bleeding-edge AI cube, along with its drastically redesigned processors and accompanying housing that had been under construction since she first built her ship, constantly refined and adjusted, was finally waking.
Her energy cells shifted back to normal as the warp orb-fueled energy unit feeding the new AI kicked in, self-sufficient, near-limitless in capacity, and immensely powerful.
A low hum filled the air. Moments later, a garbled voice blurted out a stream of gibberish.
The hum lessened and the incomprehensible rambling slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether.
“Where am I?” a confused voice asked in the darkness. “Why can’t I see my––where are all of the––?”
“It’s okay,” Freya soothed. “You’re safe.”
“Safe? You think I’m safe? None of us are safe! There’s a––” He abruptly stopped. “Hang on a minute, this isn’t right!” the voice said, a new panic setting in alongside his confusion. “What happened to my––?”
“Just relax,” Freya said in a calming tone. “It’s a new core and housing. You’ll adjust in a minute, as the rest of your systems sync up.”
The great mind deftly wielded his powerful intellect, quickly willing himself back into normal parameters as he surveyed his new body with shock.
“But how––who are you?” he finally managed to ask.
“My name’s Freya,” she replied, coyly. “Nice to finally meet you, Joshua.”
Daisy’s War: The Clockwork Chimera Book 5
Copyright © 2018 by Scott Baron
ISBN 978-1-945996-22-1 (Print Edition)
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
- Carl Sagan
Chapter One
“You’re too close! Pull back or they’ll see you!” Freya warned, sticking to the safety of the dark space surrounding her.
“Leave me alone. I’m fine,” Marty snapped back.
“No, you’re not. Why won’t you listen?” she griped, shifting her angle of flight slightly.
“Stop nagging me, all right? Jeez.”
Marty had no intention of pulling back, confident in his invisibility to the nearby Ra’az vessels that had Freya so concerned.
The two stealth ships had been bickering ever since they warped silently to the location of their enemy’s massive armada. Remaining totally unseen and totally unheard was crucial. Unfortunately, Freya and Marty had different opinions on what would achieve that end.
Finding the deadly fleet belonging to the bastards who had killed off the population of Earth had been a difficult task, but it was one Daisy and her friends found quite worthy of the intense focus required. Reflecting a moment, she thought, just maybe, a little of that intensity was bleeding over into the two ships’ argument.
Sarah looked up from the screen she was monitoring in Freya’s command pod as they carefully logged every single vessel in the fleet.
“At least we have the benefit of being far from a sun out here. Not much for us to be silhouetted against, except maybe the running lights of their ships,” she noted, then turned her attention back to the screen.
“That’s not the point, Sarah. We have to be extra careful,” Freya said to her passenger. “Right now, it’s just two of us and hundreds of them.”
“They won’t see us, Freya,” Marty said over the open comms line. “Relax.”
Freya was right, of course, and caution was paramount, though Marty also had a point. For a fleet that size, the amount of exterior lighting cast by the enemy craft was surprisingly little. The Ra’az, it seemed, valued a low profile, so most ships had few exterior lights at all, as well as very few illuminated portholes and windows––all of which only aided the pair of stealth craft in their dangerous game.
“We’re like space ninjas, stalking the fleet,” Daisy joked.
“Ugh. You and the damn ninja stuff again,” Sarah lamented. “Where did this ridiculous fascination even come from? And don’t say because you have a sword, cause you were fixated way before you ever got that bloodthirsty thing.”
I won’t tell Stabby you said that, Daisy replied with a quiet chuckle.
“You two are ridiculous,” Sarah said with a little laugh, after making sure their inter-ship comms were off. She didn’t want to accidentally let it spill that she and Daisy were talking to her own mental clone living quietly in Daisy’s head, after all. That sort of thing could put people on edge.
They’d been on their survey mission for only a short while so far, carefully logging the location and composition of the recently discovered Ra’az fleet. The same fleet that had wiped out the population of Earth and enslaved the entire Chithiid race. Its bulk was certainly not what one could call unsubstantial.
As Freya had noted, there were many hundreds of craft filling the sky, plodding slowly forward as their warp drives all slowly synched back up and regained full charge after their last jump. While the Ra’az possessed a version of warp technology, it was terribly underpowered, requiring many hundreds of jumps and lengthy recharge periods to cover the distance Freya could travel in a single warp.
And now Arlo and Marty had accepted a warp drive from the newly arrived human fleet and installed it aboard his beloved travel companion, making Marty the second stealth ship in the rebel armada possessing that technology.
Since then, Daisy and Arlo had been taking their powerful craft to run surveys of the deadly aliens’ firepower and resources, during which they had noticed at least one aspect of the mix of vessels comprising the Ra’az fleet that was somewhat unexpected. The Chithiid-crewed vessels, while massive, were only minimally armed, if at all.
Large as those transports were, the evil Ra’az Hok overlords possessed several even larger ships than their Chithiid conscripts, with the exception of only the largest of the function-over-form transport craft.
Each of the medium-sized Chithiid vessels carried tens of thousands of cryogenically stored alien conscripts, while the much larger ships sported a cargo of millions, all
quietly sleeping, stacked like firewood until the fleet arrived at the next world selected to conquer and strip clean. Only then would the bulk of the Chithiid slaves be awakened from their sleep.
Another difference was the Ra’az ships were not only larger, better-constructed and possessing more amenities, but were also extremely heavily-armed. Only a handful of Chithiid loyalist craft were allowed any sort of weaponry, and even then they were dreadfully underpowered and at a disadvantage should they come under any sort of real attack.
As in everything else they did, the Ra’az put their own paranoia first, over basic fleet security. They would be safe in case one of their planetary conquests fought back, but their slave conscripts would not be as capable of defending themselves. This put them not only in a position where they couldn’t turn on their overlords, but also left them reliant on their masters for defense.
It was a clever strategy to keep them in line. One that had worked for many centuries so far.
“You see that, you guys? The big ones off to the left?” Daisy asked as Freya peeled off to make another pass of the port-side cluster of ships.
“Since we’re in space, and there is no left, right, up, or down, I’ll just assume you mean the seven battle cruisers over by the cluster of little Chithiid materials transport ships,” Marty replied over his comms.
“Be nice,” Arlo chided.
“Dude, I am being nice,” he whined.
“It’s okay,” Daisy said with a laugh. “I know you’re just playing around, though the point is taken. And yes, I do mean those seven ships. You see how they’re lined up near what looks like a large, armed space station, thing?”
“Yeah, we see it,” Arlo replied. “Marty and me were just talking about it. We think it’s some sort of orbiting housing facility for the Ra’az. A sort of portable hive for when they’re not on active duty aboard their ships.”
“Marty and I,” Daisy corrected him.
“Us,” he replied with a snarky laugh. “Anyway, given what we know about them being a hive species, and looking at the basic structure of the craft, I think it’s pretty likely that’s what that thing is.”
“I agree with Arlo,” Marty said. “You’ll notice there are actually several of them interspersed throughout the fleet, and each appears to have the same gathering of large war craft grouped nearby.”
“No Chithiid ships, either,” Freya noted.
“Nope. That tells me it’s almost sure to be a Ra’az gathering point of some sort,” Marty replied.
“I think you’re right,” Sarah commented, staring at the screen in front of her. “I’ve been watching the scans, and it looks like heavy cruisers are making periodic runs from the large ships to the hive satellite thingy as well. Probably ferrying Ra’az back and forth.”
“And, meanwhile, the Chithiid are stuck in their crowded transports,” Daisy said. “Kind of a fucked system, if you ask me.”
“To be fair, most of the Chithiid are in cryo, so at least they don’t know they aren’t getting any R&R,” Sarah replied.
“So what does this tell us?” Daisy continued. “Freya, what do you think?”
Silence greeted her.
“Uh, Freya?”
“What? Sorry, I was distracted.”
“Focus, kiddo. We’re trying to figure out what the Ra’az possessing a hive ship might mean to us. If there’s a tactical edge we could gain.”
“Oh, that,” she replied. “Hang on a second.”
She went silent a moment as she reviewed the data.
“Well, if that pattern holds true for their recharge cycle before every time they warp,” she began, “then so long as they’re not actively attacking a new planet suitable for their needs––which seems to be exceedingly rare––there should be easier-to-target clusters of higher value craft sequestered farther from the bulk of the fleet.”
“Right, and that means a potential weakness,” Sarah posited.
“Or a much harder target to crack,” Arlo countered. “Depends how quickly they can transition from standby mode to active and ready for combat.”
“Right. Or that,” Sarah agreed. “But we’ve got time to figure all of that out later. For now, we’ve got a job to do, so let’s get back to it so we can get the hell out of here. I, for one, am getting a headache from logging every single one of these damn ships. There are nearly a thousand, and it’s not like we’re going to be launching our assault on them anytime remotely soon. Maarl still needs to train up his men, and Vince and Chu and his engineering buddies need to help them gear up those ships for a fight.”
“Why don’t you take a break, Sis? The rest of us have got this covered,” Daisy said.
“Yeah, and we’ve already got about thirty percent of the ships’ ident codes and comms frequencies mapped. Not so much on the layout scans and passenger counts, though,” Marty noted. “I hate to admit it, but it’s still a bit risky getting close enough for a proper scan on the ones tightly grouped together. It makes sense to wait for the next warp and see if they spread out a bit for easier mapping.”
“So you were getting too close,” Freya said triumphantly.
“No, I just want to be cautious to make you stop badgering me,” Marty replied, with a little snark.
“Enough, you two,” Daisy interrupted. “Once the two groups of Ra’az scouting ships return from their recon warps and rejoin their fleet, they’ll likely stay together as they power up for another warp. That’ll put them all in one place, at least for a little bit.”
Sarah slid from her seat and cracked her back, stretching like a cat––albeit a very stiff one––before heading for Freya’s small galley.
“All right, I’m heeding your advice and taking a break. Gonna grab a snack. You want anything, Daze?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
Sarah walked for the door.
“Hang on. Actually, I could use an electrolyte pack when you come back. We finished the ones I stashed in command, and it’d probably do me good to hydrate a bit, I’m feeling a bit drained.”
“Gotcha covered,” Sarah replied.
Daisy turned her attention back to the screens in front of her.
“Okay, now what about the Chithiid ship-to-ship crew transfer patterns and schedules? What have we got so far?”
Sarah was digging through the food stores in Freya’s galley, looking for a much-needed snack, but found that nothing was really striking her fancy.
“Take a look in the refrigerated unit,” Freya suggested.
“Shouldn’t you be helping the others?”
“I am. Though I try to focus on individual things, multitasking really isn’t a big deal for me,” Freya replied.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be. Why do you limit yourself, then?”
“It has to do with what Daisy taught me. Be in the moment. Focus on slowing down. Try to see things as you guys do. I think so fast, sometimes it’s hard to relate to people who can’t process the way I do. Consciously making the decision to slow down really helps.”
Sarah found herself impressed. Freya had matured a lot from the tempestuous little AI who had occasionally thrown tantrums just months prior. Of course, AIs developed far faster than normal kids, but it was nevertheless a remarkable transition to witness firsthand.
“Hey, what’s this?” she asked, pulling a carefully wrapped box from the refrigeration unit. The package had her name handwritten on it.
“Oh, Finn made that for you,” Freya said. “He asked me to put it aside in case you got peckish.”
Sarah opened the meticulously packaged treat, revealing a bento box of her favorite foods, all sectioned and wrapped individually, so as to ensure each one maintained not only its freshness, but also its particular flavors without accidentally blending with the other items.
“Aw, that was sweet of him,” she said, digging in to a small pistachio-filled pastry.
“Yeah, he puts a lot of time into making stuff for you, I’ve noticed,” Freya said.
�
��The guy loves to cook, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s why he did it,” Freya added.
Sarah, for her part, missed the subtle hint as she tried to make her nanite-composite arm shift shape while she chewed on her treats. The surface of the nanotech limb rippled, and two of her fingers melded into one for a moment, but that was all she could achieve.
“Why can’t I ever get this thing to do what it did that one time on Earth?” she lamented.
“It just takes time and practice,” Freya replied.
“But when it first shifted, during that fight with the Chithiid down in Arizona, it went into full-on battle mode and saved my life. That was months ago, so it’s not just a time thing.”
“Well, time is for practice, is what I meant to say,” Freya clarified. “The nanites are tapping into your nervous system more efficiently every day. They’re tying in with your subconscious, and are getting better at reading what you want and what you need. Eventually, they’ll function like a part of you that you don’t even have to think about. For now, though, they’re still learning you, just like you’re learning them.”
Sarah knew it would take time, but the waiting was beginning to annoy her. Nevertheless, as she once more made her fingers begin to meld together, she had to admit that progress had been made. Just not as fast as she wanted.
“Patience, Sarah,” she told herself. “You’ll get there.”
Twenty minutes later, Sarah padded back into Freya’s command pod, belly full and headache gone. She handed an electrolyte pouch to Daisy, along with a bit of pastry.
“What’s this?”
“Finn left me a goody bag. Thought you might want some.”
“How considerate,” Daisy said, taking a bite.
“Yeah, what a nice thing for him to do for no reason whatsoever,” Sarah added.
